


Those Who Live By the Sword

by ishafel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last fight Bobby has with John Winchester is over Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Live By the Sword

The last fight Bobby has with John Winchester is over Dean, and it's a bad one, so bad that John never speaks to him again. Maybe never would have spoken to him again, even if the truck hadn't broken his neck and taken the words away forever. He's not sure how much of it Dean remembers, if he can remember any of it, because that was the night John brought him in with a cop's bullet in his back and a raging fever.

"You trying to get him killed?" Bobby asks, when they've got Dean lying on his dining room table and they're finished prepping for surgery. "Scalpel."

John passes it to him with steady hands. "Yeah, Bobby, I put that bullet in him myself. What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Sponge," Bobby says and John wipes the blood away from the wound. When Bobby first knew him he couldn't hardly put band aids on his boys' scraped knees without puking, but this is as bad off as Bobby's ever seen Dean and John hasn't even blinked.

"Extractor. It's lodged up under his shoulder blade. This ain't going to be pretty, John, you sure you don't want to get him to a hospital?"

John reaches for it. "Seeing as it was a policeman shot him, I don't think that's a real great idea. What the hell's wrong with you? If you don't want to do this, say so. I'll scrub in and do it myself."

"It isn't doing this bothers me," Bobby says, taking it. "It's how he came to be on this table. You were in 'Nam, man. You know the rules."

"Get out alive," John agrees, his voice dreamy, the way every man Bobby knows who was there sounds talking about it. Like they're not sure they won't wake up and find out it's their lives since that are the dream. "Nothing worth dying for."

"And the two of you--," Bobby's gotten to the difficult bit, with nothing but his best guess at the bullet's trajectory to follow. Loses it for a second, stalls. Finds it again. "The two of you go in like men with nothing left to lose. I figure maybe you really don't have nothing left, not at this point. But he's just a kid, and he does what you tell him."

The extractors scrape the edge of the bullet, slip off. Even full of anesthetic, Dean feels it, moans a little. "Fuck. Nearly had it there."

"You really think that?" John demands. He wipes away the blood without being asked. "You think he's nothing to me but cannon fodder?"

"Yeah," Bobby says. He goes in again. "I do think that." Eases the extractor around the bullet, slower this time. "I think you gave more of a damn about the kids you led in Vietnam than you do about your boy here. Least you cared whether they lived or died." He's said too much, and he knows it. Doesn't matter. He's tired of John Winchester and his useless crusade, tired of watching John's sons fight and bleed and damn near die for the approval of a man for whom no sacrifice is ever enough.

"I'm surprised you can bring yourself to do business with a man like me," John says, but there's no hurt in his voice. Only cold, righteous anger. Maybe there's nothing human enough in John to be hurt any longer. "Dean does what I tell him to because he trusts me, not because he's following orders."

"No," Bobby says. He's got it, finally, and he starts drawing it down. "He does it because he loves you. Maybe he don't realize you think of him like a weapon, another thing you'll use and use until it ain't any good anymore. Sponge."

John swipes at the blood before he hisses at Bobby, "I've never asked him to do anything I don't do myself."

"Don't you?" Bobby asks. He's sweating now. He runs a junkyard: he isn't a surgeon. He hasn't done anything this complicated since the war. "Doesn't make it right."

John leans across Dean to mop his face. "How's it coming?" Despite the fact that he must be furious his voice is noncommittal. He's always known how to divide his focus. It's what makes him such a good hunter and such a shitty father. Bobby hopes he's remembering the week he left a ten year old and a six year old alone in the house because he couldn't find a babysitter, the high school graduations and baseball games he didn't see, the stitches and the broken bones and the concussions and the tears.

Knows he isn't. John's strength is that he believes, always and absolutely, that he's doing the right thing. Bobby thinks that makes him an idiot. "Be another minute," he says. "Shame to rush things now."

"Right." John doesn't look at him. It occurs to Bobby maybe it was a mistake to piss off a man who goes as heavily armed as John Winchester. But just then he finally gets the bullet clear. John presses gauze over the wound. "You think it's worth stitching?"

Bobby drops it on the tray. "Better to let it drain, maybe," he offers. He doesn't really think John will draw on him. Not if anything's left of the man he used to know. He helps John with the bandage. Not professional standard, but it's been a long time since Bobby doctored anything but his dogs, and they never complained. He strips off his gloves and drops them in the trashcan. Leans on the counter, suddenly so tired he can hardly move.

John's already washing his hands. "I'll be back for Dean in three days," he says. "You'll tell him to be ready?"

"Yeah." Bobby feels guilty, now that the adrenaline is gone. "John--."

"I think we're done here," John says. Walks out. The next time Bobby sees him he's on a slab in a morgue, and Dean's on a respirator. And there's no one for Bobby to say, "I told you so," to.


End file.
